City Council - Regular Meeting

Good

evening, and welcome to the 03/09/2026, to Wallington City Council meeting. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order. First item on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance tonight led by Councillor Sacco. Alright. That brings us to announcements.

Our first announcement is a proclamation declaring April 2026, National Community Development Week in the city of Tualatin. This proclamation be read by councilor Brooks.

Thank you, mayor. Here we go. Whereas the week of April 2026 has been designated as National Community Development Week by the National Community Development Association to celebrate the Community Development Block Grant program and the Home Investment Partnerships programs. And whereas the Community Development Block Grant program provides annual funding and flexibility to local communities to provide decent, safe, and sanitary housing, suitable living environments, and economic opportunities to low and moderate income people. And whereas the Home Investment Partnership, Home Program, provides funding to local communities to create decent, safe, affordable housing opportunities for low income persons.

Nationally, over 1,000,000 units of affordable housing have been completed using home funds. And whereas, over the program's history, our community has received a total of $1,810,617 in community development block grants. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the city council of the city of Tualatin, Oregon that the week of April 2026 is National Community Development Week in support of these two valuable programs that have made tremendous contributions to the viability of the housing stock, infrastructure, public services, economic vitality, and economic vitality of our community. The council urges Congress and the administration to recognize the outstanding work being done locally and nationally by the Community Development Block Grant program and the Home Investment Partnerships program by supporting increased funding for both programs in fiscal year 2026, introduced and adopted this March 2026. And we usually have a really nice display at the library for people to check out.

You know, it's just over at the Juanita Poll Center, which has received some of those dollars, and there's some upcoming updates coming as well. So if you haven't been over there for a while, check out the new siding.

Thank you, Councilor Brooks. Announcement number two, Stacy is going to introduce our new employee, our new volunteer program manager, Kate Griffin. Welcome. So let's come on up, Kate.

I'm ready. Yes. Okay.

Thanks. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm here tonight to introduce to you our newest addition to the human resources and volunteer services team. This is Kate Griffin, and she's joined our team as the volunteer coordinator on 02/09/2026. Happy one month anniversary.

She made it. A bit about Kate. She has devoted her professional career to cultivating meaningful connections among people, nature, and the community through stewardship and education. As an ecologist and educator and a retired midwife, she brings both scientific insight and a deep commitment to community well-being. She relocated to Oregon in 2024 and has been working as an educator at the Hoyt Arboretum.

And prior to that, she was in San Antonio at the San Antonio Botanical Garden where she managed conservation education initiatives and volunteer engagement. So whether guiding stewardship efforts within our parks and natural areas or leading large scale volunteer programs, Kate is dedicated to advancing environmental sustainability, fostering compassionate and resilient communities. Her background and experience coupled with her energy towards the community's well-being have made Kate the perfect choice as our volunteer services coordinator. So please join me in welcoming Kate to the organization. And I know with counsel's involvement with our volunteer programs and our community, you'll be working alongside Kate and her passions in the near future.

Welcome, Kate. Floor is yours. You want to say some words?

Yes. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here to meet you all. I really look forward to you all coming out, grabbing the shovel with me and getting busy in our natural areas and parks. This is a great opportunity for me to sort of blend together the career paths that I've had. I would love working with communities and people. I'm passionate about our parks and natural areas and getting people into them and building those opportunities for stewardship, coordination and becoming involved in communities. So I'm glad to be here. Great.

Welcome. One of the things that is one of the highlights I think of this city is we have a lot of people who like to volunteer a lot of hours, be it from the library to tree plantings to clean up. So I don't think you're going have any shortage of volunteers. It's going to be putting those people to work and keeping them engaged. Some of these people the amount of hours some people do at the library is unbelievable.

And I know I'll be doing the Arbor Day celebration coming up here planting a new tree as we do every year, but I want to welcome to the city and wish you the best. And again, you walk into a department that's been very well run for years and a city that is actively engaged in volunteering.

Thank you. Yes, I have a big shovel or a small shovel to fill the big boots of Jackie. I'm glad to be here.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Right. That brings us now to public comments. This is an opportunity for anyone to address the council regarding item that is not on tonight's agenda. Please keep your comments to about three minutes. If there's anyone here who would like to address the council, this would be the appropriate time. I have one person signed up, but you don't have to be signed up. So what I'll do is I'll take the person who signed up first and then other folks who are here in the room and then go to Zoom. The first person I have signed up is Robert Kellogg.

Good evening, counsel.

Do I still get

my address as part of this?

No, you don't to do

that Things have changed. So I'm here tonight to

talk to

you about the food cart ordinance here in Toowalton. I know there's been lots of conversations about making changes, part of the core, part of some other places. I myself am looking at putting a food cart pod in Toowalton. As part of that diligence, I went back through the ordinance we passed in 2017 and realized that it says you can only have one food cart per legal lot or parcel, which makes it very difficult to have a food cart pod unless you can find 10 individual parcels of land connected to each other by a few feet, which again doesn't exist. So while I understand you're looking at a broader rewrite of the ordinance to cover different areas and other places, I would ask that you consider an expedited effort to get rid of the ordinance that says you can only have one unit per site.

And again, I have a copy of the ordinance. I don't know if those were distributed to you. But Page four has the requirement highlighted only one mobile food unit is allowed to be present at a site at any one time. And then two pages prior to that, a site is defined as a lot or parcel of property on which a mobile food unit is permitted to operate. So, again, it's extraordinarily difficult, I can tell you from my diligence to try to find a spot for a food cart pod here in Tualatin. And when I did find the spot, I found that I could only put one unit on it. So that doesn't make much sense to make that investment. So again, just want to urge you to consider that on an expedited basis because I know it's going to change anyway. But it would be, I think, helpful for development in the city to have that change. Thank you. Thank you.

Just FYI, we will be in front of

the council

April 27 talking about the food cart regulations and take that into account.

Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room who would like to provide public comment? I don't see any hands up, anyone in Zoom, Nicole or Bates? Go once, twice.

All right, let's move on then to the consent agenda. The consent agenda is items that are considered routine. They will be adopted by one motion unless someone accounts would like an item removed and heard separately later tonight. Tonight the consent agenda consists of item number one, consideration of approval of the work session and regular meeting minutes of 02/23/2026 item number two, consideration of resolution number 5940Three-twenty6, increasing Nyberg Creek Trail construction project change order authorization amount with Nundra Corporation. And item number three, consideration of resolution number 5940Six-twenty6, authorizing the city manager to execute an intergovernmental agreement with Washington County for recycling contamination reduction education.

Would any councilor like one of these items removed and heard separately later tonight? Seeing none.

I make a motion to adopt the consent agenda as read. Second.

I have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda as read. Any comments, questions on the motions? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? It's unanimous. Alright, that brings us to special reports, our outside agency grant awardee, Ride Connection. Welcome. Is Paul doing? Alright, welcome Paul.

Thank you, Mayor and other council members. My name is Paul Markspray. I'm the Operations Director at Ride Connection. And I have with me Debbie Walkus, the Program Manager for the Tualatin area. Right Connection has been around for nearly forty years and yet only recently have we seen some exponential growth for a number of reasons.

The probably largest is the fact that we took on non medical non emergent Medicaid transportation as the provider support network. So the organization itself has grown because of that. However, we still remain committed to providing a range of transportation services, not just in Toowlinson, but across the entire metropolitan area. We wanted to start by saying thank you so much for your support. Mayor and council members, we as a transportation nonprofit, it's it's not the easiest thing to raise money for, but it is incredibly important because of the variety of of improvements to folks' lives that we can make just by giving them a simple ride.

And I would like to turn it over to Debbie to talk about the range of services that we offer in Tualton.

Great. Thank you.

I think, as you know, transportation is such an important thing for people. It connects people to their community and it connects people to vital services. And we offer a pretty big range of transportation options in the Tualatin area, Starting out with the community shuttles, I think you're all probably fairly familiar with the community connectors. We have the Blue Line, which actually runs right by this building and continues down to and goes past like the marine lumber and comes around to the Lam Research buildings. And we do quite a bit of service taking people to and from work, getting them to the MAX Station or the MAX or the West Station so then they can connect with the MAX Station.

We also one thing that you may not know about on the community connectors, they are also used by a variety of people within the community. It's not just people accessing work or going to work. It's getting to school. It's getting to the train so they can connect and get to school or work outside of Tualatin. It's also we have a elderly gentleman that we pick up every every morning, and we take him in to go to breakfast.

He and every time we take him in and drop him off, he's like he always says, I don't know what we would do without you. I don't know what I'd do without you. Because that's, again, that is his connection to the community to get out and get an opportunity to go out and have breakfast. We also have the Red Line, which covers the other side of Tualatin. And it goes by like Far West Metals is a pretty busy place that we go to, Kaiser, the Tualatin Elementary School, the Marquis.

And then it loops back around from Marquis back around to the Juanita Pole Center. And that was something that we did. We were asked by the Aging Task Force to put that into the community shuttle and make a way for people at Marquis to be able to get to the Juanita Pulse Center. And we were able to accommodate that. We also have the King City shuttle, which is the King City shuttle comes in from King City and goes into the Bridgeport area and the Bridgeport Park And Ride.

And then it comes through Tualatin, and it comes to the West Station. And we do a lot of service picking people up at the West Station to take them back out to like Bridgeport or to the King City area. We also have people that we're bringing in from King City that work at the Marquis. And so they'll come in, they'll ride into the West Station, and then they'll connect from the King City shuttle to the red shuttle and then continue on to the Marquis. So it's a neat it's a really neat program.

We also, on the red line, we have the homeschool pod that uses the shuttle, is using it once a week to get to the library. And then from the library back to where they meet at the Lutheran Church. So that's kind of a neat it just shows what a range of community members that we're serving with that. And then a really special program that we have is the door to door program. We have quite a few volunteers that help with that program.

And they're taking people from like, from their homes, picking them up at homes, taking them to the senior center or grocery shopping or to doctor's appointments. And that's a very vital service because, again, it's connecting what would be homebound seniors or people living with disabilities, connecting them to the community. We had a driver just recently who went to pick up one of our regular riders that goes to the senior center. And she, when he got to her her home, he realized that she wasn't doing well, that she wasn't her normal self. And so he was able to talk her into calling 911 for her.

And so he did that, and she ended up having to go to the hospital and stay in the hospital a couple of days for an issue that she was having. And you just think if if no one had gone to her house to check on her or to we were there to pick her up to take her to the senior center, that she may not have rallied and done as well as she's doing now. Some of the other programs we have is the Ride Together program, which is something that you may not be familiar with. It's a program which if a person has a family member or a friend that can do their transportation and they get approved through us, they can get reimbursement for some of the service that they're doing for that person. And that's a neat program because sometimes people maybe know a neighbor or a friend that could drive them, but they don't want to burden them with the cost of having to drive them.

And so that's a real beneficial program. And some other things that we're working on right now, the Plambuck say if I pronounce it right, Plambuck Gardens, it's a fairly new complex. And we're doing service we're doing more service door to door for people going for medical appointments from that building. And then we are going to be starting a shopping shuttle from that location at the March. We've talked with them and we're going to be doing a shuttle.

We're going to be doing the first one and then we're going to see how the timing goes and see if we can set that up as a regular program for them.

So just some quick statistics. In the last year to date, so last March one until the February, we did 8,194 rides in this That doesn't include our King City Service. I wanted to keep this focus on Toowalton. And I was curious how many people we bring into Toowalton from other places too. And I found we gave nearly 1,200 rides to folks who don't even live here to come here for various needs, shopping, doctors' appointments, what have you.

So I thought that was interesting. About half of those rides are on our shuttle and half are door to door. It's rough split. But it goes to show the impact that we can have even on one of the smaller service areas out of our entire network. Any questions? Great. Questions?

Councilor Brooks.

Okay. Well, first I have a comment. I just want to appreciate the work that you do. There's a lot of conversation about transportation and we have challenges here obviously with larger transportation. But I have never had anyone complain or talk about this service in a negative way.

Always all positive things, especially people that I know from the Winnie to Poole Center and different areas like that usually. And then the second thing was with the Ride Together program. Mhmm. So one of the needs that we've heard is for transportation to school at private school that doesn't have bus lines and from Planbeck Gardens and with parents that can't drive. So if there was a rideshare program or someone else that was going to that school, they could apply for the Ride Together if they were giving a ride to is that how it goes?

Our Ride Together program, you do have to be part of our eligible customer base, which is 60 and over or disabled, self reported disability.

Okay. So if the parent is disabled but the child is not?

Could we take the child to school then? It would have to be the customer who's getting a ride would be the one who is eligible. Are there any programs you can think of that would serve that need? But, know, we we've been around for forty years because we're nimble and we're creative.

Yeah.

So if you wanna give me the information

I would.

I can do some research

Okay.

And I can get back to you. Even if we can't help, I might be able to connect you with someone who can.

Okay. Thank you very much. Yep. I I have a feeling it's not gonna be the only time that this is an issue at Flambach Gardens.

We we've had some heartbreaking requests, especially in the past year for transportation for folks who are afraid for one reason or another to use other forms of transportation. And I wish we could say yes to everyone, but we have been able to make some good connections.

Yes. Thank you so much. Yes.

Other questions? Council Hilliard.

Thank you. I was curious if the ridership has increased to the Juanita Pole Center with the change in the food program that they've had there, if you noticed that or maybe that's

I think it has a little bit. There has been a little bit of an increase. I think after COVID though, of course, we know that things slowed down and but it has been going back up. Great.

Thank you.

Councilor Reyes.

Great. You for your presentation. You mentioned you will be you're starting a grocery ride share from Plumbach to other is is that am I hearing it right? Sorry. Correct

It'll if I'm be a grocery. It'll be a bus that goes out and picks people up to take them to probably to Fred Meyer for the first for the first trip that we do and then taking them back home Is with their

there a fee for that or just is that complimentary?

No, it's just we all of our rights are based on a donation basis and if people aren't able to, they don't have to donate also. Thank you.

There's no age restriction on that either, right?

The only well, they would need to be they should be senior or disabled or I believe we can open that up to other people as long as the senior the people that are senior or disabled get the first.

Okay. First dibs?

Mhmm. Right. Right.

Alright. Priority. Council president Pratt.

Well, my first question was how COVID affected you and how but I guess percentage wise, how close are you to where you were pre COVID?

That's an interesting one because during COVID, a lot of our volunteers pulled back. And so and the rides kind of did slow down a little bit, but we are we have seen an increase. We've seen an increase in the volunteering. And then the rides also are going up. And as we know, we are our population is aging and the need is actually growing really fast.

And then on your little map here, I see this dotted blue line with an AM hospital trip and I wondered if you'd just explain that a little more.

Well, that one is we had when the green line went away, we had some people who were in that area that were taking early rides into the West Station and into the actually to this side of Tualatin for work. And so because there were changes being made to that schedule, we put in an early run going up to that area to pick people to pick a certain group of people up that needed transportation back to the West Station so that we weren't leaving people stranded.

Oh, that's great. Then finally just you've heard the Clanback Gardens mentioned and we've heard from people that live there and there are a lot of people there that don't have vehicles. So whatever you're doing, whatever you can continue to do to help people, this going to the grocery store is a great start and I really appreciate that.

Other questions or comments? All right. Well, just want to thank you Ride Connection for providing the services here in Toowalton. We're one of the few communities that does have a community shuttle. We're very appreciative of it. We're always very supportive of it. And given the ability to get more financial resources to expand your services. But I'm a big fan of ride connection and I see your drivers all the time inside the chamber and you guys are working fanatically inside the chamber in your offices. So thanks again for being located in Twalter and providing the services and thank you for your update.

Thank you. All Thank you for your

right.

Right. So that brings us to public hearings. Item number one, consideration of ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six, adopting a city initiated code amendment to the twelfth and development code to include the keeping of domestic foul as for permitted use in the low density residential districts. Since this is a public hearing, I have to read a required script. This is a public hearing for the City Council to consider ordinance number fourteen fifty four-twenty six amending the Tualatin Development Code.

The hearing will be conducted as follows. First, the public hearing will be opened and the city staff will make a presentation. Next, the council will hear from members of the public who wish to testify in favor of the ordinance, followed by members of the public who wish to testify against the ordinance, followed by anyone else who wishes to testify. Upon completion of the public testimony, individual counselors may ask questions of city staff and any person who provided testimony. After counsel questions, the council will close the public portion of the hearing to consider the resolution.

Upon conclusion deliberations, the council will consider whether or not to adopt Ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six. I have a few more comments here. Does any member of council wish to abstain from participation in this hearing? I see none. All right. I'll now go ahead and open the public hearing. Staff will now present and we have Erin and Theresa plan, giving us a presentation on this new ordinance. Welcome.

Thank you, Mayor and good evening, counselors. My name is Erin Ingeman. I'm the Senior Planner here at the City of Tualatin.

And

as the Mayor mentioned, I'm joined by Theresa Montalvo, who is our Planning Manager. I will be leading the staff presentation for PTA 20 for the domestic file regulations. So for tonight's agenda, I'll cover the project purpose and background, and then we'll go into an overview of the code amendments and staff research that was used to inform this proposal. We'll then review the approval criteria, and, we'll end the discussion with the Planning Commission recommendation. So for some background, the City Council passed an ordinance back in 2013 that established the keeping of backyard ducts in the residential low density zone, the RL zone.

And then recently this past summer, we received a code complaint regarding some strange animals, which happened to be ducks in the RL zone. The officer met with this property owner and he just explained that he didn't know that DUCs were prohibited in the zone and later had a conversation with U. S. Counsel to review the matter. And then at the end of the summer, you would ask staff to amend our chicken regulations to expand and include domestic fowls.

So that's why we're here tonight. So, the purpose of the domestic fowl regulations is to provide minimum standards for the keeping of domestic fowl humanely in urban backyards while safeguarding the health, safety, welfare of the citizens of Tualatin. So what we did tonight was we expanded the regulations for the keeping of backyard chickens to include domestic fowl. Our public engagement was limited to the legislative process requirements and we tried to limit the scope of this project. So the ordinance before you right now for PTA 20 six-one will amend the Tualatin Development Code Chapters thirty nine and forty.

And then later tonight, you'll be able to review a companion ordinance that will amend the municipal code Title six fifteen for the keeping of backyard chickens, which will expand to be domestic fowl. And the reason we broke this up into two groups is because ordinances related to development and planning is codified under the Tualatin Development Code and that codification of general ordinances in the city falls under the municipal code. So as some background, I wanted to highlight areas of the city, which are zoned, low density residential and would be affected by the text amendment. So it's the areas of the city shown in yellow here. Just a note too that some of this area is in our planning area that hasn't yet been annexed to the City Of Tualatin.

So that's particularly in the Basalt Creek area down here. And then there's some pockets up north and by Stafford. I'm trying to use my laser pointer, but it's not working. But if you have any questions about which areas are in the planning area, but not quite annexed, I'm happy to answer those. But I just wanted to give you a visual.

And now my pointer is not working. Can we advance to the next slide, please? So staff did some research, looking at other domestic foul ordinances in the Portland and Oregon region. And we'll do a comparative analysis in a few different slides. But generally, what we found is that there were some similarities with domestic fowl and many cities were permitting certain types while excluding other types.

So under this proposal, we include chickens, ducks, pheasants, pigeons, quails, partridges, doves and similar birds for personal use. And these birds share certain character traits, which could control or which could include sustainable sources of eggs, natural pest control. They generally require minimal space needs and they are able to adapt to human activity and environments. Next slide, please. Whereas, some of the birds on our prohibited list include roosters, geese, guinea fowl, peacocks, turkeys, emus and ostriches, These birds can be loud, they can cause property damage and they can be aggressive towards people and pets.

Next slide, please. So this is our comparative analysis, and we've included Tualatin at the top. And I won't go over the slide in its entirety, but generally, on the right, you'll see our key. The green dot means that these cities permit certain birds. The diamond is when the code is silent on a type that includes a general category or a vague statement, which may include a bird.

The dash just means that the bird is not listed in the code. And then because Portland does things differently, they allow certain birds on larger pieces of property. And then red just means that it's a bird that's not permitted in the city. So I'll give you a moment here. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to address them.

Councilor Brooks.

Thanks, Mayor. I just had a I was just curious when there's agricultural land and I'm not even sure if that would be applicable to us. But if there was an agricultural land, is that considered low density residential? Or is that rural? Because I know that there's commercial uses too, and it's

a different kind of property? Yeah. So the way our code is set up in the low density residential zone is that there are certain properties on the northern end of town by the Tualatin River that could consider agricultural animals under conditional use permit, but those animals are limited, I think, to cattle, horses, and there's one other animal that I'm drawing a blank on. But that's currently how our code is written in that regard. And then we have this separate section in our municipal code for backyard chickens, which we're reviewing tonight.

Okay. And for that particular group of people, are they allowed to

have chickens? They could if they follow the municipal code and get a chicken license with us.

Okay. So they're treated similarly to just a residential low density in a certain way? Correct. Okay.

So they wouldn't have to do their conditional use permit for a chicken license.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you. So an overview of what's in our municipal code is that we do have some licensing requirements. So if somebody was interested in having backyard chickens and now domestic fowl under consideration, this license would be valid for five years. It would permit up to four fowl on any lot.

And these birds must be confined to a coop and a fenced backyard or a run. And then for the coop, we have some size limitations and some buffering limitations. So the coop must be located at least 10 feet from property lines and 25 feet from abutting residences. And then we also require that the coops be maintained in good repair and sanitary condition. As I mentioned, we kept our public engagement fairly limited, but it will meet our legislative requirements.

So we did provide notice to DLCD, government agencies, our CIO groups. We advertise in the newspaper and on the city website. And as I mentioned, the ordinance for this item is limited to Chapters thirty nine and forty of the development code. For Chapters 39, we're updating how we refer to agricultural use characteristics. So we're expanding that to include domestic fowl.

And then in the low density residential zone of Chapter 40, we're updating our permitted uses to include domestic file. And then like I mentioned, there will be a companion ordinance later tonight that will review the municipal code regulations. But I have a slide that kind of provides an overview of what we're doing with that code. So the approval criteria for tonight, we included a findings and analysis in your packet as Exhibit one. This addresses Chapters 33.

This speaks to the legislative process and the plan amendment process, and we found that this project meets our approval criteria. We also met with our planning commission February 18 to discuss this proposal. We had a very good robust conversation with them on the potential of mitigative measures to address noise, odor, vermin complaints that sometimes arise with this domestic values. And you'll see that Commissioner Ledek included some supplemental materials for your review as Exhibit five. It generally included his questions to us as staff, and then it was a few news articles from Eugene and their experience with domestic violence.

So the commission requested some clarifications to our companion regulations, which I'll go over on the next slide. And they also directed staff to consult with our code enforcement officer just to make sure we have the right tools in place. And I was able to speak to our code enforcement officer. His name is Brian Levine. And he assured me that we have the proper language to respond to vermin complaints in our municipal code, particularly when it comes to feed and compost.

He also confirmed that he was properly trained to respond to such complaints. So while we strive to mitigate for these impacts, it's kind of inevitable that they'll come up, but at least we are equipped to deal with them. And then they also directed us to research best practices and guidelines for minimum coop requirements since we're looking at a variety of birds. So I did some poking around. And if the amendments are approved, I'll update our city web page dedicated to backyard chickens to include domestic fowl and some best practices that I found from accredited sources like the CDC, the American Poultry Association and OSU.

And on this slide, I wanted to highlight the changes we're proposing to the municipal code, which is that companion ordinance. The black and the red are the staff changes that were put forth to our planning commission, and the blue are the additions they proposed that staff add. They had some really great suggestions. So you'll see that they clarified that the maximum of four birds is a combination of any of the four that we allowed on one lot. They also wanted to clarify that we wanted to be silent on harvesting since that could include eggs, but specify that on-site butchering and slaughtering is prohibited.

And then there is also a clarification about our setbacks to abutting residences. That was the intent of our original code, but this is just good clarifying language. And with that, the Planning Commission did forward a unanimous recommendation for City Council to adopt the amendments proposed under PTA 20 six-one and Ordinance fourteen-fifty four-twenty six. And I included a proposed motion for your consideration. And with that concludes my staff report.

All right. Thanks, Erin. With that, I'll go ahead and switch over switch gears a little bit. And are there members of the public who wish to testify in favor of the proposal? I have one person signed up, but you don't have to be signed up. So I'll take the person who's first signed up and in person. Any other folks who are in the room who'd like to testify in favor then invited to do that after that. And we'll also reach out to the folks in Zoom who are in favor. So I have Kevin Vimalavani. Come on up, Kevin.

Hello again.

Yeah. About three minutes or so.

All right. I'll try to keep to that. So thank you all for discussing this at length. As you know, we started this process back in June. And to me and to the outside world, this issue is a little bit silly. It's birds in people's backyards. So why would the council and the city and the staff spend so much time and effort discussing it? Because it's just birds. Like, what does it really, you know, matter? It's not talking about how to find places for homeless people or offer them rides where rideshare folk they left or how to grow businesses in Tualatin or food cart pods or everyone getting liquor licenses because they can't make it elsewhere.

It's not that impactful to the grander scheme. But to individuals, if you look a little bit deeper, it's more about how can we align to Wellington with what the residents want. It gives a plain clear language that I think is why we're in this position in the first place. It wasn't clear. We weren't aware what we could or couldn't do from the research that we found.

So these changes make that very clear. You're allowed certain birds with certain personalities, and you're not allowed those that are aggressive and messy and noisy and cause problems. So that's really great. And at the end of all of this, even if you didn't say that, you know, we were expanding that, making it clear would have been a win for us. But when we look at it in a deeper sense, I see the city, the staff, our leadership showing that they care about citizens.

I'm one citizen asking for one silly request, and this is the fourth time that I've been in front of you. So clearly, you all deemed it worthy of your time and effort to look deeper and not stand on history. We made this decision thirteen years ago. We're willing to look at it again is what I take away. And I really appreciate that, that we're looking at keeping Tualatin progressive with the trends of what's going on in life today.

The thing that I like the most about the way that the the staff presented it and the the changes are we're not asking to have more birds in Tualatin. We can already have four birds per house that fit in our residential zone. We're asking for a greater diversity, and that's always a good thing when we can include diversity in decisions. If we all lived in a city with the same houses and the same families in them and the same cars on the same streets, I don't know that we would all live here. I wouldn't want to live in a city like that.

So increasing the diversity is really important, and that's why I really like the the language that's coming out of the staff recommendation. Thank you to everyone across the board for all the time and conversations that you've put into this. It really, really shows how much that this city cares about its citizens. And moving forward, how we can keep Toowalton moving in a progressive way without overarching and doing too much to control the situation. So thank you all for hearing me and for all your work on this. Thanks Kevin.

Is there any other folks in the room who would like to testify in favor of the change? We have everybody in Zoom, Nicole and Bates. Right. I'll switch over to other members of public who wish to testify against the proposal in the room or in Zoom? I have no one signed up in person, anyone on Zoom?

Is there any other member of public who wants to testify on this issue? Either in Zoom or in person? Does any member of the council have questions for staff or for Kevin? Council Hillier?

I have a question for staff, please. Sorry to have make. So I really appreciate all the questions from the Planning Commission and your transparency with us about the discussion and the attachments. The conversation around the enforcement officer, obviously, you talked to that person about the language. But I guess my question is more around does the enforcement officer feel like they actually have the capacity to navigate, going around and seeing if there are know, maybe people are in compliance who have chosen to have a license and, for those who haven't, or is this gonna only be complaint driven?

I mean, I drove around multiple times and saw chicken coops right up next to the fence of other people, and and I see there were no complaints so that they stayed. So I'm just kinda curious because when we see things in a community and you some people know it's against the rules, some people don't, it becomes the norm that it's not. So I'm just curious about our capacity.

Thank you. I appreciate that question. And to clarify, code enforcement in the city is complaint driven, so that might be why you've observed some of those things. But I do have some statistics that might help with the conversation. So our code enforcement officer showed that we have currently 28 active licenses in the city of Tualatin.

And that since 2021, we've had a total of eight complaints that he's addressed and looked into. Some of them refer to rats. Some were just simply that someone had not obtained the chicken license or that perhaps they had gotten chickens and they were in the wrong zone. So those issues had been resolved. And I don't know if that directly answers your question, but it might help kind of give you an idea of how often we're seeing complaints and how it might affect their capacity to review such complaints.

Thank you. It addresses the complaints about this particular ordinance, but not all ordinances. Is there any chance you have this crazy question? Mean, they have a full time job addressing this. So even if it was raised to 10 a year, it would not negatively impact their capacity by the sounds.

Yes, I don't believe so, but I can certainly look into it.

I wouldn't take the time. I was just curious. Thank you.

Other questions?

I'm trying to understand. So I see that it showed a maximum chicken coop or not chicken coop, domestic fellow, coop size. But it and then you're just saying, but there's nothing about minimum size. I kind of worry about people on the other side just not you know, we hear all those horror stories about cattle and stuff. So is that just something that you're going to have suggested best practices, but it won't be in the ordinance?

So that goes back to our Planning Commission conversation. And they did bring up that concern about are we adequately considering the needs of these birds. And in my research, I found that the guidelines and best practices are somewhat across the board and I couldn't really find a universal best practice that would suit some of these birds. So, where we left the conversation was that we would provide these guidelines and best practices on our website. And that for cases of animal abuse or neglect, the state has regulations in place for that.

So then it would defer to the county or the police department to look into animal negligence.

Okay. And then my other thing I noticed that was addressed somewhere by someone on the planning commission was, have in there, they have to keep it clean and everything, but the actual compost piles from the chicken

poop.

So I just

was wondering why there was no wording about containing that. So I looked into our municipal code and I found that we had a section in our municipal code that is under the title labeled nuisances affecting public health, and its bullet is two, debris. And we do have some regulations in place around manure in the city. So because we have that language in place, I felt that if we had something else, it might be conflicting or an overlapping standard. So the idea was that we just defer to this broad debris standard and we would enforce it through code enforcement.

Yes, those

are the only two things that I didn't really see that were addressed. So thank you.

Other questions? That's all here.

Sorry. Just a question that when this goes on the web making an well, this were to go on the website and you list what the best practices are, I just guess I would request that there is a link to them the debris ordinance to see that like so that could be referenced. It's hard sometimes to find all the information, right. And if we can make it easier and lower that barrier, I'd love to see that.

Thank you.

Okay. That's great feedback. Thanks.

Councillor Reyes.

Thank you for the presentation and information. Did you get an opportunity to receive feedback from any CIOs or any other community involvement? I want to say agencies,

any community involvement groups. So we did send notice of this hearing to our CIO groups, and we hadn't received any direct communication back from them regarding the hearing. And I guess there may be silence tonight. There may not have been interest in the the ordinance, but we didn't receive any direct feedback from our CIO groups.

Okay. Or yeah. That's kinda odd that not one person from our CIOs made any comment on it. Just just curious on that because I'm with, like, counselor Healer say, a lot of people don't know that there's even an ordinance on on domestic vows or chickens. And people might not just they might see them, but they don't know if there's actually something that's out there.

A lot of people don't like to bother with their neighbor because you have to live next to the person. So I'm just I'm just curious. I I mean, just I didn't see it. I didn't see anything maybe because I just I don't know. But I I was I'm just really it's really strange that I don't hear anything from anyone after having a lot of buzz during the whole chicken conversation in 2013. So I'm very odd that we didn't hear anything from anyone.

I appreciate that perspective. I think because the intent of the the project was to have a limited scope with limited public engagement, we didn't really do a robust community outreach, and maybe that could be some of it.

Councilor

Brooks. I just want to thank you for the work. Me, some of the conversation around domestic foul I think was handled during the chicken decision. And for me, this looks like a way of improving it and making it more universal. I just keep thinking about the people that are allergic to chicken eggs that might want to have quail eggs.

And I look at the prices in the grocery store of things like that. And we all know how prices are going up. But when you start with something that's like $8 a carton for tiny little quail eggs that people eat that they're forced to do, I just think that looking at it with a more universal perspective is interesting. I will say, too, when I lived in Michigan, I lived next door to people that were from Iraq. And they were really good at pigeon like they would do the carrier pigeon training and work.

And I know that I had never really had exposure to that before, but I know that different cultures have different interests. So I think that having more to look at this and look at what other cities are doing and have a more code that makes more sense than just chickens. Most of them are smaller birds actually than chickens. So to me, it's really good work. And I appreciate all the work that you did. And I appreciate the Planning Commission as well. Thanks. Thank you.

Councilor Reyes.

Thank you. Again, I'm just thinking about like I worked in a place where we had animals, wildlife. And one of the things that we would do, the bird flu was really big on even chickens and so they would remove them from public because they were so and and we're talking about an area that's really I mean, they take care of these animals like better than anything. And I'm just the reason they will move them is because just the sometimes in the air, that would that flu that the virus will be carry on to the rest of the to the visitors. And so I'm just looking at from that point of view from knowing that I don't know.

I I just feel that it's that what we have in our ordinance isn't and I know we're changing language, but that also gives opportunities to bring in other need. Like every time someone will complain then, okay, we're gonna change the ordinance. We're gonna do this. But I think that I just I'm concerned about that too, about viruses in the in the air that can transfer around. And that's just because I've been in a place that we would just completely remove the animals from public view and take them somewhere where they were completely away for like month sometimes like a month or two months.

And so I'm just thinking about that because that is in the air and we don't even know that it's in the air. So I'm seeing it from that point of view and I don't know if people are thinking about that. That's just and I don't know. To me, the the other part is like, I don't want people to think that they can also I know it said you said it clearly, no slaughtering and all that, but I would not want to, like, know that that's happening in my city of these animals to eat them. I mean, it's just a little weird about that. And I don't know if it's good for our public. That's all.

Other questions? All right. So seeing no other further questions, I'll go ahead and close this public hearing. And we'll begin deliberations on this. So deliberations or motions.

And this one of the ones that it's first and second reading and all that good stuff.

I motion to adopt Ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six.

You got do the first reading.

By first reading. Only. By title only, I'm sorry. Okay, sorry. I motion for a first reading by title only of Ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six amending the 12 and development code chapters thirty nine and forty related to domestic file regulations PTA 20 six-one. Second.

I have a motion and second for first reading of an ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six. Councillor Sacco?

Aye.

Councillor Hillier?

Aye.

Councillor Brooks? Aye. Councillor Reyes?

Yes.

Council President Pratt? Aye. And Chair Bosotti?

An ordinance related to land use, amending the Tualatin Development Code chapters thirty nine and forty related to domestic foul regulations PTA 26 dash one.

I motion for a second reading of ordinance fourteen fifty four dash 26 by title only. Second.

I have a motion and second for second reading by title only of ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six. Councillor Sacco.

Aye.

Councillor Hillier. Aye. Councillor Reyes.

Yes.

Councillor Brooks. Aye. Council President Pratt.

Aye.

Chair votes aye.

Ordinance number fourteen fifty four dash 26 and ordinance related to land use amending the Tualatin development code chapters thirty nine and forty related to domestic foul regulations PTA 26 dash zero zero zero one.

I motion to adopt ordinance fourteen fifty four dash 26 amending the twelve ten development code chapters 3,940 related to domestic foul regulations PTA 26 triple zero one. Second.

I have a motion and second to adopt ordinance fourteen fifty four-twenty six. Councilor Sacco.

Aye.

Councilor Hillier.

Aye.

Councilor Brooks. Aye. Councilor Reyes. No. Council President Pratt? Aye. Chair votes no also. So it carries actually it's going have to come back for another reading because it was not unanimous tonight.

It'll be on the March 23 agenda.

All

right. So that moves us to general business. Consideration of ordinance number fourteen fifty five-twenty six amending the Tualatin Municipal Code Title six-fifteen regulations related to the keeping of backyard chickens to include domestic fowl. I think you guys you don't have a presentation. The last one was it? All right. So with that, let's see. So this is a companion ordinance that amends the municipal code. We have the staff report, which is included in the previous action. There is no additional staff report. This too, just like the last ordinance, will require first and second re buy title only and then an adoption of the ordinance.

So moved.

You got to do the whole first.

Okay. What's the number? Ordinance one four five five twenty six?

Yes.

Okay. So I move to thank you. I move first reading by title only of ordinance number fourteen fifty five dash 26 amending the twelfth municipal code title six dash 15 regulations relating to the keeping of backyard chickens to include domestic fowl.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to for first reading by title only of ordinance fourteen fifty five-twenty six. Councillor Osaka.

Aye.

Councillor Hillier.

Aye.

Councillor Reyes.

Reading first time. Yes.

Councillor Brooks. Aye. Council President Pratt. Aye. Chair votes aye.

Ordinance number fourteen fifty five dash 26, an ordinance related to keeping of domestic foul, amending title six dash 15 of the Tualatin municipal code.

I move for a second reading by title only of ordinance number fourteen fifty five dash 26 amending the Tualatin Municipal Code title six dash 15 regulations related to keeping of backyard chickens to include domestic fowl. Second.

I have a motion and second for second reading by title only of ordinance fourteen fifty five dash 26. Any discussion on those motions? Councilor Sacco? Aye. Council Hillier?

Aye.

Councilor Reyes?

Yes.

Councilor Brooks? Aye. Council President Pratt?

Aye.

Chair votes aye also.

Ordinance number fourteen fifty five dash 26, an ordinance related to keeping of domestic foul amending title six dash 15 of the 12 Municipal Code.

I move to adopt ordinance number fourteen fifty five dash 26, amending the 12 to municipal

code. Second.

I have a motion and second to adopt ordinance one four five five dash 26. Any discussions on those motions? Councilor Sacco?

Aye.

Councilor Hillier?

Aye.

Councilor Reyes? No. Councilor Brooks? Aye. Council President Pratt?

Aye.

Chair votes no. Again, four two, so we'll have to come back to next city council meeting. All right. Thank you. Next item on our agenda tonight is a presentation on the Toowalton Sherwood Road rail crossing study. Mike and Abby, come on up, get that last swing in. You're going be doing a lot of talking here.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I am Mike McCarthy, Tualatin City engineer. And when last we talked back in about mid January, we just the decision was to award the consultant contract to take a look at the area around the intersection of Tualatin Sherwood Road and Boons Ferry Road and the railroad and recognizing the various transportation issues in that area. And we talked about the first phase of the contract being to take a high level analysis of various grade separation options. I think we heard, let's make sure things are feasible before we start really talking about them.

And we're also talking about reviewing existing conditions. And yes, we did find that there were some traffic issues in the area to confirm that. And the next step would be to present the high level analysis to counsel, talking about cost, timelines, affected areas, special considerations, things like that. And that's our plan this evening. And so I'll introduce the rest of the panel. And this is

Abby McVetroge, Engineering Associate for the City of Twalton.

Amy Griffith, Senior Engineer with Kittleson and Associates.

And Mark Gutorik with Kittleson and Associates. Go ahead, Mark. All right. Good evening, Mayor and Counsel. I'll keep this presentation fairly brief. I believe it's in your packets along with a memo tonight. So with that, let's bring the mic over to you a little bit,

just in case you have a

We might

have to slide over.

Yes. Yes. Right. So our presentation tonight, we're going to talk first about the purpose, and then we'll move through the alternatives and the viability of those alternatives, construction staging, what that will look like. And then I'll have Amy talk about the initial cost conceptual cost estimates and then time frames, and then we'll bring back for council questions and consideration.

So as we get into this, as Mike mentioned, is we want to make sure council understands kind of what you're getting yourselves into and how this might play out. Again, this is a 10,000 foot view at this point. We haven't done the full study. So this is using the initial work and then experience on similar projects to give you guys a picture of how this may again play out. So why do a grade separated crossing?

This for those that have been in this community for decades, a lot of the traffic on Toowalton Sherwood Road dates back to a Westside bypass not being in place, 99 Connector not being in place. And as a result, we have the de facto Toowalton Sherwood Road Connector that links 99 and I-five and thus the traffic and the backups that you experienced today. Combine that with heavy turning movements and train movements, both freight and passenger, you have a bottleneck in your city. So not a big surprise from that. So by doing a grade separated crossing, and when I say grade separated, that's when we're taking the rail and either taking it over or under the road or taking the road over or under the rail.

So you're separating those conflicts to do that. So there's four potential benefits of doing this. One is increased multimodal circulation and safety in the area for pedestrians going back and forth across the tracks, same with bicyclists and then also for surface transportation, trucks, passenger vehicles, same. Also reduced congestion, and we just talked about that connection between 99 and I-five for both freight and regional commuter traffic, so we can relieve that. Also opportunities for economic redevelopment.

And you'll see as we talk about how this may need to be constructed, the impacts, it does open up other possibilities. So as you look at this, you need to look at the transportation improvement, but also land use opportunities that it presents to the city from that standpoint. And then finally, it minimizes both North South and East West connectivity barriers that you have today with the rail and Boones Ferry, East West and then obviously, Toowalton Sherwood North South, if you create some grade separated, it allows pedestrians to potentially go North South or East West without competing with some of those conflicts as we have. So when we look at this, we're going to talk about scenarios, solutions and alternatives. So scenarios are the big things.

So we either do grade separated, we do at grade, which means we keep it basically as is today and we widen or we do no build alternative, which is we live with what we have out there and we continue down that path. So those are the scenarios. And then within those, especially the grade separated, we have a number of solution sets, and we'll talk a little bit more about those. And then within those solution sets, more alternatives within that. So there's a lot of ways to solve this, but some have impacts that are maybe not as desirable and others have opportunities.

And that's what we're here to understand a little bit more tonight. So with the grade separated, we'll start with the rail scenarios here, familiarize everybody. So here's the McDonald's, Boones Ferry, Toowal and Sherwood and and then Dutch Rose. So the rail under and you can see the rail line here is basically a trench and going underneath Toowal and Sherwood and continuing past the West stop and so forth. So that would be a rail under scenario.

So you sink the railroad approximately about 23 feet down and that allows you to go under and bridge over the top. The next scenario is rail over, same sort of scenario, but now you elevate the rail line and go over the top. This you have to rise about 23 feet in the other direction. Actually, have that wrong. So when we went down, we have been 30 feet down, 23 feet up. The trains are taller than the trucks. So that's the difference on that standpoint. So under both of these, the service transportation stays very much the same. You have a signalized intersection. You still have the turning movements here and you just separate the rail from that type of scenario.

The third solution set is roadway under the rail. So under this scenario, you're dropping to Alton Sherwood Road about 23 feet coming underneath Boones Ferry and also underneath the rail and then coming up at the other end. So the question here is, all right, we lost the intersection, so where does that traffic go? There's a number of alternatives in this solution set. This scenario basically across from the existing signal here, you'd potentially pop through and tie in to Tonka and traffic would turn at this intersection to come in to either Warm Springs Tonka and access Boones Ferry Road under that.

And we'll talk about other scenarios like this, but that's an option that would allow the Boone Ferry traffic to get to and from Toowalton Sherwood and also separate the grade separation at here. And then the over scenario, same thing, going over the top. And again, because you separate this intersection, you go over Boone's Ferry and over the rail, you need to connect in some manner. So this is one scenario, again, you connect at this location. Another scenario would be to have right in, right out.

So you eliminate, you don't need to use the signal here, but you'd have a right in. So it comes down to Nyberg, you need to turn this way. And if you're going to go west on Toll and Sherwood, you come up and turn right and go this way. If you're coming from Sherwood and want to be on Boones Ferry, you take a right down Tonka. And if you want to go to I-five, you come up and take a right at that scenario.

So there's a different combinations. And as you see in this, all of them start to affect land use and affect buildings. That's one of the things that council needs to understand in this scenario. All the scenarios are going to affect property, and they are going to have relatively substantial impacts. Those impacts can be opportunities, and that's how you have to look at this scenario as this is a generational type of investment in the community and such you are going to have changes such as that on a scenario like this.

So the other scenario is at grade. So basically as we have today, it may be widening and adding a right turn pocket and maybe adding another through lane, but basically keeping things at grade. And there's benefits there. However, you're still dealing with the trains under that scenario. So you solve a little bit, but it's not incrementally going to move you in the right direction.

And as Amy will notice, these are going to be cheaper. The other thing you would add to this is what we call intelligent transportation systems or ITS and everybody's like, what's ITS? This would be upstream train warning. So as trains are coming in on your Waze or on your Google, you would have connections that would say, oh, there's going to be a train here in two minutes. So maybe take a different route or redetour yourself.

So if you're coming up, for instance, from Newburgh and you're going to Portland, you would have on your ways. If there's a train coming, it might take you up 99 and come across at a different location from that standpoint. So that's we don't have there today, but that would be an ITS type of solution to redirect traffic at that location. So what are the opportunities that come with us? Basically, it's those four things that I described upfront of the why.

Traffic operations and congestion and safety, we can improve that. We can reduce those conflicts between rail and freight because we physically separate those conflicts. We enhance that local circulation, both for pedestrians and bicycles, and we provide that economic redevelopment opportunities. You're going see that here in a second as I go through potential impacts on the ability to construct these alternatives that we just looked at. So how viable are these alternatives?

A few things that we had to look at. First and foremost, has anybody ever seen a picture, not an AI generated picture, but a picture of a train in water? Does that you see that too often? Probably not too often. The railroads back in the day when they first started doing these like, it's not good to put trains in the water. So trains are always elevated out of the flood zones. Dropping the train tracks into a flood zone is something the railroads are not going to really say, yes, that's what we want to do. And if you were even to do it, you'd have to have pumping systems and very expensive. But first and foremost, the rail lines are not going to allow you to drop a rail line below the floodplain. So that's going to conflict out that rail under scenario fairly quickly.

There's also difficulties raising the railroad over the tracks. To do that, we call it a shoe fly. For those that read the memo, what's a shoe fly? The ability to build a parallel track system so you can raise one and keep the trains running. Unfortunately, in Tiger, because of the narrow right of way that the rail line has, there's not enough room really to build a parallel track and raise the other track at the same time.

You'd have to blow out buildings probably about zero five mile in both directions. And at that time, is that really worth that? So the two rail ones, viability wise and their willingness to do that and keep both west running and freight running is very unlikely at this point and to go down that path low odds. So my opinion is that's probably not where we'd end up. It's going to be something with the road scenarios of over and under from that standpoint.

So construction staging and we'll talk about this in a second, is going to have sizable impacts on adjacent properties and businesses. And we'll talk about that in a second. And that's where you as a council get to make the big decisions, but it's something I'm going to warn you upfront, there are going to be impacts. And we have to understand those impacts and be able to make the trade offs on the economic benefits, the transportation benefits and the overall community benefits of those impacts that will go through. The other element there's another a number of viability concerns.

If you went through the attached memo, it kind of goes in detail in each one of these. We won't go into those in significant points this evening. So the floodplain considerations, most of have been here. It does flood. So the scenario of where we're at here, we're either in the 1% or the 0.02% flood zones.

Again, that's why the rail is probably not going to work under and also the roadway under you can do it, but you have to have the pumping systems and if electricity fails and gas backup fails, then you have yourself a bathtub effect. It can be designed, not ideal if you have other alternatives from that standpoint to go forward. So as we look at those original ones that we talked about, the rail under, rail over, those are probably not viable. The road under, still worth looking at because there are some benefits. You could do some tunneling and other things and have land use benefits.

So that one, I would say, you keep it in play as we go through the process. The road over probably at this point in time, the most viable from a construction impact and avoiding the flooding scenario. And then at grade, obviously, we have it today, we can widen, improve that with upstream train warning type of systems. And then the no build, obviously, we can stay as is from that scenario. So what I'm going do is dig in a little bit more on the road over scenarios, you understand these impacts, and we'll talk about cost, and then we'll open up for some questions at that point.

So any one of the scenarios that we looked at to date, we were going to touch one and probably multiple of those blue parcels that you see on this map, either to the north or to the south as we go through there. And as we look at this, we have a large amount of traffic and that's why we have the congestion. So when you construct a bridge on Twalton Sherwood, you can't just go out there one day and drop the bridge in, it's all ready to go, you have to construct that. If we took all the traffic and stopped it and detoured the traffic for nine months, we could actually do that. But then where does the traffic go?

Does it come up here along Tualatin and Herman? Does it go somewhere else? Not a lot of good detour routes. So we have to, in essence, probably create the detour as part of the construction. So there's really four scenarios that we looked at.

The old Tualatin Sherwood Road actually is this is the remnant of it here. You could come across here across Tonka and then come up. So you could basically have a new realignment of the road in this location and build it all in that realignment. You could build in place, but to build in place, we've looked at the modeling. Again, without detours, that isn't feasible just building it in place.

So if you were to build in place, what you would need to do is do a temporary road to the south. And that's the question if you're going to go through the Mexican restaurant, the office, McDonald's, O'Reilly's, Chase Bank and Dutch Bros. You're going to go through that. Then the scenario from an engineering standpoint, if you're going to take all those properties to do a temporary road, you should ultimately probably build your ultimate road there. It's easier to build a new road in that vicinity.

And then what would happen is you would have a new road and that curvature basically you're using the old curvature of the old road would come through here. And then all this existing road would open up for economic redevelopment and in larger parcels on the North Side, which could create opportunities, for instance, to grid out Nyberg and other opportunities like that. The only other opportunities that we looked at, which are probably non starters, but just to give you kind of the creativity, as you came on Nioberg and developed a temporary bridge across the lake and then came through this property, that would be a detour scenario that you could do as well. Doesn't impact any buildings per se, but it does impact property. And also, would it have a temporary bridge over your current lake feature within the community?

So as all those, you're probably as a policymakers like, that's not a lot of great decision or opportunities there. But again, it's a generational type of improvement as we get into that. So with that, I'm going to have Amy talk a little bit about costs and how this would get funded and then a little bit about schedule and we'll open up to questions at that point.

Great. So we did an initial preliminary cost analysis of both the grade separated alternatives and the at grade alternatives. We know that this is a pretty wide range, but that's because there's quite a bit more analysis that needs to happen. But we just wanted to give a ballpark idea of what this type of cost of a project like this would be. And so we estimated $2,035 it would be about $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 to do a grade separated option.

And then for the at grade options, would be between 10,000,000 and $20,000,000 and $2,030 So we used a different year for both of those, recognizing kind of the speed at which a project could be done. So then that begs the question, how would a project like this get funded because there's not $200,000,000 just sitting around to be used for something like this. And so we kind of outlined what some of those options are. And so there's the local regional funding sources that could be a portion such as a match, you can have a transportation development tax, you could have a major streets apply for some of the major streets transportation improvement program, MSTIP funds. And then from the perspective of federal funding sources, there's a number of different options that we show on the slides and included in the packet.

The one that we think is the most likely to be a strong option for this type of project is the Railroad Crossing Elimination Grant Program. And so in each of these, we show kind of the overall range of what people get award what cities get awarded for these types of grants. And so the ones for that type of program is we saw them as high from the last twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four cycle as high as $2.00 $4,000,000 There are some other options of the consolidated rail infrastructure and safety improvements as well as the build grant program. The build grant program isn't quite as high per grant award, but there's kind of other funding sources as well. And from a schedule perspective, so we're here talking to you today to give you the high level idea of what you'd be getting yourselves into with this project.

But as you can see, we'll be coming back the plan is to come back three times over the course of the project before even the hearings phase to talk about a little more detail into the background conditions, to go through and look at other ideas that you all have beyond the ones that Mark just shared today to evaluate those and then to make it a recommendation on a preferred alternative. And then from there's multiple touch points with the public kind of throughout, but the plan is to have materials kind of shown to this group before we're promising anything that isn't viable. And then from the general timeline perspective, when would something like this actually be able to be built? And so I think what we showed is around 2030 would be the expected timeframe for just accurate alternatives, but then 2035 is kind of the typical schedule for the broader construction. However, there are some opportunities to have a kind of alternative delivery approach that could push that up to as early as 2032.

And so in this slide, we also talk about kind of what else happens even after you go through this type of study. And with that, I will hand it back to Mark.

So just kind of, again, summarize that the rail alternatives of raising the rail unlikely. Twalton Sherwood will likely go over under over at this point is more viable. Several properties would have temporary or permanent easements or right of way takes an impact to those properties. And as Amy said, we'd be in that $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 range for those great separated crossings. Now Tualatin would be very competitive in that area.

Our partners at HDR, Dow and ourselves, we've done a number of these grants in the past. You have some things working for you. One, because the urban type of scenario it is, the large amount of traffic on to all in Sherwood. So the railroads look at that, and that's just more conflicts when you have all those vehicles. You have the freight on to all in Sherwood and then you have the freight and commuter line on the rail line.

So all that would add up and score really well from this scenario. So it's not this is not a pie in the sky, oh, you can never get this. This is this program came through the IIJA and then through the Federal Rail Administration, and we'll continue to see this program play out as more and more conflicts with rail continue to grow over the years. You're seeing more and more investment on the rail crossings. So it would be competitive from that standpoint.

And with that, we talked about the benefits and we'll open up to questions. And then as far as potential next steps, you could say, hey, this is enough staff. We've heard enough, we're done. Or understand how we're going to move into this process and the feedback that you'll start to get from the community of, my building is going to get impacted by this. There is going to be a lot of construction. There's going to be a lot of things. It's a big price tag. How are we ever going to do this? Those are the type of comments that you're going to get. But again, we have to look back.

It's a generational type of project. It's solving a community issue that is going to continue to exist. We're not going to have a 99 Connector that I can see. We're probably not going to have a Westside bypass of 12 Sherwood Road as we've continued to widen out over the last thirty years since 6 Corners got developed out in Sherwood. It's going to exist. And as you all know, in this community, that's a key infrastructure part. So this is an investment to move that into the next century for service from that standpoint. So with that, we'll stop, answer any questions you have this evening. I don't know, Mike or Abi, anything else you want to add?

I think you've covered it pretty

Okay. Yes.

I think as you mentioned, this does sell very well, I think, the federal level because of the sheer volume of traffic, the freight movement, the volume of traffic using the rail line, the crash data, quite a few crashes in And these then also it's been identified by the railroad as a problem area. So all of those I think would help it sell well. And the issues that would help it sell well I think would sell well on both sides of the aisle. Safety and mobility sell well to either side.

So quick question before I open it to the council. Am I remembering right, if you did get a railroad crossing elimination, you have to have a 20% match, don't you, at the city? Last time I checked, it was 20%.

They've been adjusting that back and forth. That's generally what they go after. However, we've seen some adjustments in that. So what you can also do is dovetail it. It could be, for instance, and this is we've had a few projects like Citi has a park. You could have a Rafa funding through Metro, and you could have a state, and that could be your local match, and then the federal. So it doesn't always have to just come from the one jurisdiction. So it could be city, Washington County, Metro, and the state being the local match in this instance.

State in Washington County having no money. Questions. Councilor Reyes had her light on first and then Councilor Brooks.

You kind of went through it a little bit, but can you explain again why it can't go over the train over? Like, I think that was one of your scenarios.

Yeah. So let's

Can you explain that again? I'm sorry. It went too fast and I

Oh, no problem.

Yes, the 23 feet or something in 20 So three

let's go here. So build this, again, if we could go shut the railroad down for a year and then they don't use the railroad for a year, Easy to build. But they're going to say, no, we got to keep the trains moving and keep them on time. So the only way to do that is what we call a shoe flying. It would be basically to build a parallel track about 30 feet off the center of the current track to either the right or left of it.

Well, if you go back, for instance, right through here, the right or the left is in all these buildings. The other thing that's difficult is once you clear this, you have to get down quick enough to go across to Walton Road and get under the other railroad, which then makes it difficult for the west stop at that location.

Understood. Have an elevated west

Thank I'll also add that if you do take the rail under over, it is eliminating the vehicle and rail conflicts, but

you still

have the major congestion at the intersection.

That makes sense.

Thank

you. And then I think the other issue with the rail over is in the trains are up higher and that noise tends to project out farther. So it have more effect and then we'd have a berm or a structure along the whole side of the downtown.

And the other will be the flooding issue, right, Okay. That you Thank you.

Councilor Brooks.

Thank you for your presentation. When I've been thinking about this I had a couple questions. One is when I've been thinking about this, especially if you were going to sell it regionally, because what the mayor said was a concern. However, we have this big problem with congestion on I-five and a lot of truck traffic. So I just am curious if you were getting something like this going.

Is there a way to actually expand the rails for more rail, like two rails.

So expand train traffic, is that what you're referring to?

Yes, or mix of train and like MAX type?

Yes. So the rail line itself doesn't have a capacity issue. We could add a lot more trains. It would have an impact on the vehicles because every time those trains come by. But from capacity of putting more freight trains and more passenger, that's not going to be your limiter on It's really the vehicle interface that's the limiter at this point.

Right. So I just think when we're especially since we're doing the Cora project right now, it's something around consideration for me when I'm thinking through this, what's a real problem. And I'm glad that the rail lines identified as a problem as well. My other question is, if you were going to divert traffic say you diverted traffic down Twalton Road, the other Twalton Road, and just did a small widening there. Is there a reason that we wouldn't do a diversion like that rather than cutting into all those buildings?

Yes. So the probably the simplest way to think about this is think of a pipe. Right now you have a we're going call it a four inch pipe, just 12 inches wood, you got four lanes. You got 12 inches road that's a two lane pipe or okay. So if we're going to take all the traffic, the four and put it on that, we really need a six lane pipe to detour.

And then you just don't have the capacity. If we were to put everything up on to all of that road, it would have to be twenty four hours a day as much capacity as we could get there. So you'd have backups on to I-five and all the way to Sherwood because there's just not enough capacity to reroute on to a two lane road, those four lanes of traffic, plus the traffic that's already on Tualatin Road itself.

I'm just wondering even if about splitting the difference. I'm from Michigan, and I've seen things like that all the time. They build out there without any problems and they divert traffic all the time. So I just don't I have a different mindset around it because I just have seen things like this happen before. And if there's enough of a need for it, I just think the combined thing, if there was a way to involve Metro and the state and the railroads, that that's when we could be more creative about how we could integrate better design through the whole downtown planning and then utilize any widening that would be helpful or redirection that would be helpful to the core planning as And my last question is with the ITS solution, why are we not just using that right now?

There's nothing that prevents outside of planning, design and implementation and cost. But yes, that's there's nothing that prevents that from occurring.

And how much does that run usually about?

Full ITS out here, you're probably in the 5,000,000 to $7,000,000 range roughly.

But that's not including the road widening?

That's just the technology side Yes. Of For the ITS element.

You should

explain. Explaining

the road basically.

Yeah. That's just the software. No. It's the software alone. Well, it's the software and then the detection. You have to detect the trains like approximately five, ten miles upstream in both directions. So it takes detect detections along that facility to because the trains don't go at the same speed. So you need to understand when a train is coming and when it's gonna get to this crossing, which means you have to understand the speed at which that train is arriving. So there's a lot of detection that comes in and then it's the communications with the Googles and the ways to make that happen. So again, it can be done, but that's the reason it's not been done today.

Okay. So they kind of just do some satellite thing with just So that was just That was one question that came to mind. So that's a big if we were just going to leave it as is but improve it, that's a big investment as well without any matching federal dollars or anything like that. And then I just have a curiosity just from seeing what's been going on here and these ideas of putting like a major baseball stadium downtown and all these different kinds of things that they'd like to probably have season ticket holders from out this way to go down there and be able to get on the road and down through things or down to Salem. Is there any like do you have a vision at all of something that you could see that would help to accommodate something that would be helpful to for people as well as for freight?

Are you talking about sort of like a transit service like up towards Arenas and down to Salem something like that? Yeah. There have been some discussions going on about extending west to Salem and that's still being discussed. Think getting into Salem is one that gets particularly difficult. As you know, we've been working with Tri Med and some of their changes in service. They at least had a really good direct bus line from Bridgeport into downtown. And I think those are some really good needs for us to be pushing in regional transit circles.

Because it would be interesting with their needs if there's federal programs that are designed around those types of things as well, especially because like you said, both sides of the aisle, the commerce conflict that happens with all the landscape issues that we have with our I-five and such limitations for up and down the coast that eventually we just have to keep thinking about these things. So those are my thoughts. And if you have any thoughts about things that I've said that would be interesting to me, I'm always interested. You very much for the presentation.

Okay. Thank you.

Other questions? Councillor Hilliard.

Thank you. I'm a little curious why you didn't lead with the funding process to be tolling over this bridge. Kidding. Okay. So what

are you thinking about it?

It'd be 5,000,000 to $7,000,000 to put that in, Alright. So I have a couple questions. This one is only adjacent. So when they built the walking bridge in Sherwood, what kind of construction did you call that? It felt feels like one day there was nothing there, and then it was beside the huge thing was beside it, and then they put it in pieces. Is what do you what do you call that? And is any of that an option as you're talking about building a bridge or an overpass?

Basically, in that project, we're somewhat familiar with it. You'll build the structure off-site or adjacent to and then you'll lift it into place. Another example, I mean, for those who've been here a long time, the Fremont Bridge up there that got shipped in and they they lifted it up and put it in place. And that's that's doable. It's doable for new facilities and like the Fremont Bridge, there was not anything there.

So you were just putting it out in a spot that there is. Some point, maybe beyond our lifetimes when they have to replace the Fremont Bridge, that's when it becomes difficult, is when you have existing facilities in place. And that's what you have here. You have existing rail, existing Boones Ferry, existing Toalin Sherwood, and now you have development all the way around it. And that's why you're kind of locked in. If we had no development one side or the other, okay, yeah, we'll just build it next to it or build it one way or the other from that.

Okay. I was curious. And that leads me then to kind of my question about, I guess, is the term imminent domain or what is it that would be impacted? Could you if I understood correctly, either any decision we make, including widening the road, would involve that. And I was just curious about kind of the just should I just guess at what it is? Or is there a difference in the return of investment for what we would take and that sort of thing? Know that's not a very well thought out question

and As we I get further into this study, I mean, looked at the cost we showed you tonight or the construction cost cost plus the acquisition cost of those properties. That's all in that range. We get into it, we have to start looking at what is the viability of those buildings and what's the lifespan of those buildings. So not all those buildings are going to be here in fifty years because they're going to have to get redeveloped because of structural and so forth. And then what are the opportunities that it presents to the city?

So if we were to grid out that area and make it like Bridgeport Village or something like that, there's benefits from a tax dollar standpoint, property tax and so forth in that. So that's where we have to start looking at what is the benefit of this. If we take out those six buildings, yes, there's a negative, there's a cost upfront, but what's that long term benefit of doing that both from a transportation standpoint, but also from an economic redevelopment standpoint.

Yes, that

makes sense. Thank you. I'd like to then now go to the funding sources that you listed. Sorry, you don't have to. It's page 16, if that's But I'm just looking at the federal sources. I think we've talked about the local ones. But we live in a very questionable time right now, I guess. And so I mean, to me, the reality of those funding streams is not a very real thing. Mean, in my business life, I'm federally funded and I see those gone just like that. So I wonder really,

I mean

So transportation dollars at the federal level, what you see a lot of is continuation bills. So the IIJ that got passed back here, what's it, four years ago now. You'll continue to see that in both sides, again, to Mike's point, projects that are freight, jobs, safety, those play well, be it red or blue. And so these three major fundings, they've been in place now for about eight, ten years in different names. The bill was tigered at one point.

It was billed before that. It may get rebranded, but the same sort of grant is going to sit. The Federal Rare Railroad Administration, it's all about safety so that the RCE grant or the rail crossing elimination grants, if anything, you're going to see more money go into that over time because back to Councilor Brooks, we're going to put more and more trains on there. So those conflicts are just going become more and more pronounced over time. So eliminating those conflicts, every state we work in across the country is a rail crossing study like this is becoming fairly commonplace, where twenty years ago, it was more an exception.

Now you see it all the time. One is because it's just becoming so apparent to the communities, the rail and trucking associations. We have to solve this and the only way to solve it is grade separated. So you're going to see these and I think you're going to see them continue to grow. More competition obviously, but as we mentioned, I think the city of Twalton is fairly uniquely qualified just because of the uniqueness of this location.

Okay. Thank you. And I was going to ask about the ITS upstream because I'll be honest with you, an intersection that I'm worried about is that that same train goes right in front of Twalton Community Park and everything stops right there. So to me, I'm concerned that that isn't part of the conversation. And I'm not on the Cora. So maybe that is part of the discussion there. That is a huge concern to me for kids getting to school, to activities at the park, like all sorts of people recreate there. So I just wanted to put that out there. And really think we should add tolling, but that's just me.

Other questions? Council President Pratt.

On the funding, I think that federal is not my concern because that rail crossing elimination program I know is out there. But I'm more concerned locally. The mayor and I are on the committee with ODOT for the capital improvement projects for the next ten years, and this is not gonna be on that list. And misstep funds are pretty much unavailable from the county, so I'm concerned. What?

They're getting smaller.

Well, yeah. I mean, I'm concerned we get enough to cover our local share, but I'm sure you could hope and patch things together maybe. I was wondering back on the when you were talking the rail over on that map like were you saying the old Tualatin Road there by Dutch Bros that you basically just build it there? The new road?

Oh, yeah. Let's go

to Over crossing was one of the options. There, there you go.

Well, Right that was here. Yeah. What we would end up doing is the old road used to come in like this, like this, and

then ended

up like that. So if you were to one option is to basically continue to all in Sherwood down cross here and parallel to the south and then hook back in here. So basically, shift to Alton Sherwood Road basically 80 to 100 feet to the south of where it's at today. Obviously, you're impacting all those buildings. But what you can do then is you can build it all out of traffic. And then when it's ready, you just move the traffic over there and you abandon the existing facility. So that it makes it easier from a construction

Cost wise, okay.

Versus build a temporary road, build something permanent in the existing place and then go back and tear off the temporary road. That just

I from a financial standpoint doesn't make much can see how it could tie into the core everything except for there's eight or 10 businesses there we'd be wiping out.

And

then to Councillor Hillier's point solves I guess the traffic part of the train somewhat, that it's so dangerous there by the park where that rail is too. We're not really addressing that with this project.

And one of the things I'd mention, I think as Mark alluded to about if there's a lot of options for how it would get built that could be in its current alignment or further to the south. If it does move to the South, the properties north of the new road, it's like between Tonka and 12 and Sherwood and the right of way to all Sherwood then becomes developable property in the Cora area. So there's a fair amount of opportunity there.

I get that except for what it how do you you just eminent domain the existing?

Yep. Think the and then the federal processes that we'd be following. And yes, there's a huge disruption to the people involved, they are very handsomely compensated and often relocated. So projects typically then have to pay to relocate the business to a new often better property and pay them for their costs and purchase the property from the people.

No, I mean the one with the changing that road like that could I think it could be a pretty interesting Mhmm. Interesting change to the Cora.

It could. Yeah. Yeah.

And a lot of those buildings that I mean, I've been doing this long enough. Remember I did the impact study for the McDonald's right at the beginning of my career. I mean, buildings are now thirty, forty years old along that south. So it's not they're not going to fall down tomorrow, but they're the redevelopment of them isn't what it was twenty years ago. It's different now. And those property owners look at it differently. But again, to Mike's point, you're going to have to compensate and relocate, but it does open up opportunities that aren't there today.

And if there is other than we'll probably hear the most about Dutch bros, but it's another story. But if we were really looking at this, would you do outreach to those business owners to see how much they're going to be upset or if they're kind of more willing participants in

this?

Yeah, if we were to do this, there would be a lot of community outreach involved and I think talking to businesses would be really prudent before we start talking about that.

And then if we just did that lesser thing where we put the sensors and everything in the road, how much is that going to be different than now because we're not avoiding that train. We're just letting people know it's there, right?

Right. So the if we did the at grade solutions, we've had a project in our transportation plan for a while to build an eastbound or right turn lane which would widen the crossing a little bit, significant cost there. But then it will facilitate people turning right from eastbound Boones or eastbound to Alton Sherwood to go southbound on Boones. Another option is a northbound right turn lane on from Boones Ferry to to Alton Sherwood. It'll be really tight to squeeze that in between the McDonald's drive thru and the road. And once you've taken out the drive thru, you've bought the McDonald's. So there's probably looking at a turn lane or two on one approach or another and potentially doing some reconfiguration.

And if you did that, then the I guess would the city buy all that land and then what would happen to the old 12? Who would own all that? Like 12 Sherwood Road that currently exists and then where we do the eminent domain. Who would own all that land then at that point?

It would probably end up being city owned for a while and then could be sold by the city. Depending on how it got done. If the county is delivering the project it could be on county land. But if the city delivering, it becomes a city project and then it can be sold through some redevelopment activity.

Thanks. Councilor Brooks.

I have one more or two more. One is when you're talking about expanding it, you're talking about building out south, right? You build a second road south?

That would be one option.

Yes, there's one option, a new road.

Because there's a lot more external obsolescence there and roads to nowhere and all those kinds of problems in through that area, right? Yeah.

Yeah. There's some port connectivity.

And it's so they could actually have an improvement. The businesses could have an improvement. And then you would have a bigger area for the Cora. And then my question is, with projects like these, if you were going to have improvements to the rail system, it seems to me that that would spur relief to not just us, but the connected communities around us. And so if there were regional improvements, can there be regional partnerships and a regional plan that would help lift the project if it would like I think So both Wilsonville,

this is as I mentioned earlier, Roth or the regional flexible funds that go through Metro. This last round, there was six projects that got anywhere from about 8,000,000 up to 40,000,000. So those would be you would go after that because those how those are voted on with would be your regional partners of Wilsonville, Tualatin, Tiger, Lake Oswego saying, hey, this makes a lot of sense. So let's move that forward as a ROFA grant.

That to me is really an interesting concept because we've been talking about these issues with the bus service. We've been talking about these issues with the lack of consistent transportation. And even with the tolling issues in the congestion, I forget, some of our reps called us like the congestion region or something like that. So I know that it's not a problem unique to us. And I also know the problem getting downtown for events at these stadiums and different events like that are not unique to us.

So that's where I keep thinking about Metro myself. But I'm also just curious about I'd love to see what like I'd like to see a map of the rail like of the how the rails all work a little bit more because they just kind of creep behind the bushes and there they go into the backyards of America. So it'd be nice to like see it in a bigger way Yes. For

I think there's some very interesting maps of it. And yes, I think as Mark mentioned, there are some good regional funding sources. You mentioned the regional flexible funding allocation or RAFA. There's actually a fair amount of dedicated state money towards eliminating rail crossings that could be used in this way. And I was thinking through kind of what would be some of our competition for some of these funding sources.

And maybe there's some out there, but I'm having trouble thinking of another crossing in the state that has this volume of traffic, particularly including as much truck traffic over a rail line that's this busy. I'm working my way down the UP Mainline, pretty much anything even close to this size is grade separated. And there's very few other places that have

Because we go Safeway.

Well, what I

And the Wilco. Yeah.

That's a much smaller real line. Yeah.

But what I would say too is we always have feedback around like the number one concern from our community is this traffic jam that is our community. So for me, even though this is a big picture, like you said, a generational project with the interest that our community has and with the fact that it's not going to get better and that the rails would be invested in as well as ODOT to alleviate some of this. I think sharing the problem and sharing the wealth might be a nice change for Toowel. And so for me, I'm interested in understanding more about possible solutions and appreciate understanding more about these funding opportunities as well in these programs that I don't know as much about as some other subjects. Thank you so much.

Do you know I mean, I know they're talking about increasing passenger rail up to Vancouver and someday hopefully down to Salem and Eugene. So do you know do you have any forecast about and then the increase of freight rail, like if that's projected to increase over the next decades?

Yes, I don't know if or when passenger rail would expand. I know there's still a lot of discussions and a lot of people who want it. Freight rail wise, the last decade or two have seen an increase in freight generally.

Yes, it's a less expensive way to deliver Right.

Drivers.

Right.

Other questions? I've just got a couple. So I just want to make sure on the elevating to Alton Short Road over the railroad. So you're looking at basically everything from Martin Austen Square down to Dutch Bros would be impacted for that reroute?

Under that scenario, yes.

And the feds are going to pay for all those properties? It's part of the construction Martinize Square is a mall. I mean it's a retail facility with multiple tenants.

Yeah. So if we went to the South, know, the Mexican restaurant, the office building, the McDonald's, O'Reilly's, the bank, and Dutch Bros. Those would be the likely buildings that would be impacted by that softening.

So not the vet because the vet just put a whole new building in.

Yeah. And I think there's a couple of these particularly the vet and particularly Martinuzzi Square. I think we'd be looking at more like what they call a partial take.

Yes. We would this property here, you come probably most to the north of it, like Mike said. So it's really these ones. These ones are going to likely be partial takes.

Because I just know the vet's office just built a whole new building probably right where you want to put the road.

I think Edelson has done a great job at the preliminary look at this, but we are still very high level. Yes.

Because it seems to me we've got down to two options here. One is the widening option with ITS and the second option we're spending a lot of time on here is the temporary reroute and the shift to the South of 12th And Sherwood Road which would benefit Cora. So just to get to where what you need as terms of direction tonight what are you looking for?

What we're looking for is do you see enough potential to keep looking and to look further into?

It sounds to me from hearing is definitely widening in ITS since it's the cheapest. And the second there seems to be pretty much interest about the Toowalton Sherwood reroute with an elevated crossing knowing that businesses will be impacted. Like you mentioned, digging the train into a moat is not happening, putting a bridge putting a train on a bridge is not going to happen. And it seems that most of council is well, I don't want to talk to you guys, but it sounds like we're all focusing in on that idea of moving to Alton Shor Road, elevating it.

Yeah. Then it's really it's kind of the sub alternatives and of how do you connect it. Yep. You know, do you connect on both sides? Yep. Do you create a grid street system through there? That's where you kinda get into that details. And that's where the public involvement process and engaging the businesses would come in

at that point.

And then the road under, like it's

the water? No way. Yeah. No. I've been here for two floods.

So I just wanna make sure that you want like that we're hearing you that you are like the direction that we need is whether to continue to pursue a grade road over rail and all the impacts that potentially has financial and otherwise.

And we can do this in pieces like we're going to take the next step basically. We're not saying build it. We just want to look further into if it's feasible.

And keep it on the table knowing that same timeline 2035 is prior when the core is going to be hitting its prime when development is happening or during that and that if this could be incorporated into that plan, our downtown actually might be a little bit bigger if we do this generational change.

Let's also talk like when we're concerned about taking some of those buildings. If you are able to do a great separation, the value of every commercial building in the community is going to go up. So it's not going to I think that there's ways to work through those things.

All right. It sounds like what I'm hearing is, it sounds like we keep going looking at the road over family of options.

That and the ITS row winding.

And then we'll check-in with you guys.

I think as Mike says, as we keep going, we have to bring the public up to speed. You guys were able to understand the Especially the guy

who owns McDonald's. But you

always have to understand you have to be able to answer the why and the why not. Why does this work and why not this? So you have to all the stuff that we've gone through, you have to kinda go back through that story and get everybody up to speed on why you can't put the rail under water. So that has to go through that. But we're just saying, on the outside or the outcome of this is probably something that we're talking about tonight is likely mostly to come out of that process.

Okay. One more. Sure. I just turned it off. If we were going to do the grade separation, do we have any percentage of the congestion relief and the number of cars that are sitting, the number of cars that would not be sitting. And also I kind of I'm also thinking through climate with carbon reduction and some of the conversations around even older buildings and upgrading buildings so they're more so that we could look at carbon credits as well.

Yes. Think if so if the road over option was built this would no longer be a bottleneck. We'd probably be looking at probably the I-five Interchange being the bottleneck after that. But there would be quite a bit more capacity getting through here and there'd be quite a bit more, I think, North South travel on Boone's Ferry. I think from what I've been seeing, there's been a lot of focus on moving to Alton Sherwood Road.

And so a lot of people have decided to kind of just avoid Boone's Ferry for this section and use other routes. So it'd be a fair amount of traffic coming back to Boone's Ferry, which I think would probably help walkability of some of the other routes. And I think as far as the climate impacts, removing all the congestion around this intersection today, I think is a pretty significant source of greenhouse gas. Some would argue that clearing this bottleneck might mean more people would drive. I'm not sold on that.

But I think removing all the idling vehicles here would be significant.

And also if we're going to do this Cora, we have sitting traffic. So it's not just greenhouse gas, but health and well-being of the community, right?

Yes.

Okay.

There's also opportunities for bike improvements, pet improvements that could take trips off of the roads.

Right. So if there is a bridge, you wouldn't have to worry about crossing to Alton Sherwood Road at grade, you

just walk

a ride right under

it.

Okay. I think the real improvements will help the free Oh I'm sorry, I talk quiet. Anyway, I think you heard me. Thanks.

So I think we've heard to keep going looking at

the at

grade options with the ITS coordination and looking at a road over option. And then we'll go back and look more at existing conditions and some of our traffic modeling and start pulling that together. We'd be pulling together an advisory committee of mostly technical people from the various agencies involved who we've been in touch with loosely so far, but we'll formalize that a little more, bring from downtown community and pull together a little more specifics about the Road Over family and kind of sub families of the Road Over of what might work and what level of connections to make whether it's a Southeast corner or Northwest corner or even potentially like ramps up or something like that. And we'll be bringing that back probably in the next couple of months for our next steps. All right.

Appreciate

it. And anything else I should be covering or no?

Appreciate the study. Nice work.

It's 10,000 feet, remember that. Subject to change, but we'll be back. So we'll be

back down about 8,000 feet

over Exactly. The next

right. Thank you.

A little gosh, you're going to start tripping over soon.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Right. That brings us to items removed from consent. We had none tonight. Council communications, we have two proclamations requested. So the first one, we have a proclamation and pledge request for older Americans month. The request is in your packet. Do we have support for that proclamation put it on the schedule? Head nods?

Okay. Then item number two is a proclamation request. We've had this over the last few years. It wasn't a formal proclamation in the past. I've made announcements about it, but it'd be nice to have a proclamation this time for this year for Month of the Military Child. Okay, all thumbs up. All right. So with go ahead.

All of those are have resulted in a bit of congestion for the first meeting of April. And if all of them are read when they've asked to be read, we're going to have six, I guess five now on that meeting. Is that the March 23 meeting? I'm sorry. So we have Arbor Month, National Library Week, Transgender Day of Visibility, then older Americans and the

Military child.

Military child. Just want to make sure you're okay with that.

I mean each counselor can get one. I mean it's not like we're doing that very often.

Well your policy says two and with exceptions so.

Okay. Are you okay with that? Okay. Thank

you.

Yes, be fast. We didn't have work sessions tonight, we'll do the council roundtable starting with our City Manager, Cherilyn.

All right. A few things have happened in the last couple of weeks. Let's see. So our operating agreement with Clean Water Services expires this year and it's a long term agreement, but it's coming up to expiration. And so we've been meeting with Clean Water Services.

Rachel Sykes, our Public Works Director has been in charge of this. And we're going to be bringing that forward on a work session. We have wrangled and it's very operational, but we want to get in front of you before we bring it forward for final approval in the intergovernmental agreement. So there's been a bunch of work about that. Along with the mayor and our economic development team, I was part of a meeting with Greater Portland Inc.

To talk about Tualatin specific issues and opportunities in the economic development landscape here in Tualatin. It was a really good meeting. Impressed with Greater Portland Inc, but I'm also very impressed with our economic development team led by Sid. Our operating agreement with Washington County regarding the library expires at the June. And of course, we've been working on this for a long time, the funding and governance portions of it, but that now we're actually wrangling the IGA.

And so we're going to be bringing that forward in April for a work session to also talk about the IGA language. So we've resolved all the funding pieces of it, but this is more of the operating operating language. And so Gerri Anne and I have been working really hard on that. We're meeting tomorrow with the cities of West Linn, Lake Oswego and Sherwood regarding the transit study that we had talked about, what are we trying to achieve, better transit service and what does that look like and potentially doing a study that gives us our options. We're working on the state of the city.

The mayor is doing a promo tomorrow, I believe, and we've been working on the script and the invitation and so a lot's already going into that. You know this because we sent you emails about it, but we submitted the Riverfront Park into the earmark process for both Salinas' office as well as Merkley and Wyden's. Working with Clackamas County on a stranded worker agreement. So this is for an emergency preparedness mechanism that should a major event happen like the Cascadia and folks are not able to get to their emergency operations center. So like, for instance, Ben Bryant lives in works for the city of Happy Valley, but lives here in Tualatin.

If he was not able to get to Happy Valley, he could come here and work in our EOC. And so the stranded worker agreement would put things into place that would make that like who pays for what, where's the liability and those types of things. So we'll bring that forward and have you take a look at it, but I'm really excited about that. And then you also know this from the emails we sent, but the property that the Urban Renewal District, the TDC purchased across from the Grange, the Matthias property, we'll be going through the process of demolishing that and preparing it for it's turned into a bit of an attractive nuisance. So we need to do something with it or else put a lot of money into it to make it habitable.

So the cheapest option is to demolish it and to go through that process. So that will be happening soon. That's it.

Okay. Councillor Brooks.

Thank you, mayor. Excuse me. Last, on the twenty fifth, I attended the NBC Leo, meeting, which was a moment in black history meetings. So it just was a connection before I see people at the National League of Cities congressional conference and updates on what we're up to as a caucus, some basic changes about how they're managing regions and then new they have a progressive leadership structure. So their second vice chair is the first vice or those kinds of things.

It's all in order, all orderly. All the people that have been in leadership got reelected, and they're moving through their graduated council program. And then there was a policy briefing webinar on energy microgrids and energy security that I attended that was interesting. There was I touched base with the mayor for the first time after surgery and had a nice call. And then on the twenty seventh, we had the LLC legislative update, which I'm sure I'm not the only one that was on that.

And then the twenty eighth, congresswoman I think that was the day. Congresswoman Andrea Salinas was in Wilsonville, so I was up there listening to what she had to say. I think it was the Saturday that we had declared war, and there was she was pretty upset that there was no congressional power on that. And she also went through and explained a lot of injuries that people have been dealing with in the hands of ICE, dislocated shoulders and terrible glass in kids' eyes, and all kinds of pretty horrible things. So she was upset about that and was talking about facing those issues.

And then also was at the Chamber Awards dinner and kind of pinch hit it in, presented an award. And I know that other people will talk about that as well. And then on the fourth, I went to the LOC Women's Caucus Board meeting where we discussed mostly our plans for the upcoming conference in Pendleton, which is open for registration if anyone's interested in going. The women's caucus will be hosting a couple different things, for sure one thing. And the other thing to say about that was there are a lot of women that were on or talking about other women that were so frustrated serving that they were just being talked over.

They just were not going to run for reelection. And they're leaders and people that I've seen for a long time. Just So whether you're a man or a woman, if you are in meetings with women and they're not being honored with the conversation to help support each other so that everyone feels like they're being heard. I know that we do this well here, and we have a lot of women serving. And it was kind of heartbreaking, really, that people were so feeling very set aside in conversations and talked over.

And there's also a division. So the LLC another LLC ledge update. And then yesterday, I was downtown at the International Women's Day. There was the phenomenal awards, which was pretty cool. There were five individual awards and then one mission award.

One of the women was there was a gal that was assaulted with a man with a knife, and she reported, nothing was done. And he was the same person that wouldn't stab people at the max. So she has a nonprofit that she runs. There were several really interesting programs there. And then there was a mission award for the women's center that's moved out of Portland State.

No. The University of Portland, and they're on their own as a separate nonprofit now. And I think oh, and then today I was at yoga at the Juanita Pole Center. There's gonna be construction, but it's good news. And one of the things I wanted to mention is, like, they have Pilates, but it's you can have it covered by your insurance.

And the SilverSneakers is also insurance covered. There is going to be their very first cheerleading The cheerleading program isn't the first thing, but it's part of this mid grant that includes adults 30 and over. So they're trying out programming that includes an increased age range. So if I committed to sign up, it's a free cheerleading thing. And if anyone wants to join me, I challenge you to be the most enthusiastic.

And there's also another interesting one that's called the Death Cafe, which sounds really morbid, but it really is kind of interesting because it talks about how they're doing snacks and conversation for free, where they're talking about this is a movement that emerged in Switzerland and France. It's not a grief support group, but a group directed discussion with no agenda to increase awareness of death and a view of with a view to helping people make the most of their finite lives. So just a way of being more engaged with your day to day, while not ignoring, this time limited event. Thank you.

Councilor Sacco.

I don't have anything to report. Thank you.

Councilor Hilliard.

Thank you, Mayor. I attended for Councilor Reyes. So again, Councilor Reyes, thank you for giving me such advance notice to attend the regional immigration discussion meeting. And we heard, apparently, like usual from, the attorney general, Rayfield. And really, he just went over kind of the current landscape of what what's happening here in Oregon and some of the resources that are on the state website.

They're really trying to do some innovative collective problem solving and for people who might be looking for ways to be an ally or different things, it's there are tool kits that are on the state website that you can go look for and these are living documents, so they're being updated all the time with the input of our police force, like with all different groups of people, so I encourage people if that's information you're looking for. And then one other thing that I thought was kind of interesting as part of the conversation is that a lot of people are calling in because they their persons have been violated, And while it may not rise to the level of a criminal, action, it could be, still a violation that's that they're able to take and move forward. So they really encourage people to call the hotline and I did not write that number down, but it is on the attorney general's website. So it was a very interesting conversation. Thank you.

So thank you for bringing that up because it's something that I actually talked to Cherilyn about on our call because I know that some of the information he's collecting is also for data collection. And I was just curious if the police departments are involved in recording or reporting to the attorney generals, not something that's going to be prosecuted, like but something for statistical information like the incident that I was made aware of when I was over at visiting the new playground. I think it's just a reporting encouragement to report. So I don't know if we have any processes like that going on or unusual.

If you're asking me, I would defer to counselor Reyes because she's I've only attended the meeting one time. But the civil acts was more of people calling in. It was a self report sort of conversation, but that's the limit of my knowledge and I would defer to Councilor Reyes or the chief.

I am not aware if Tualatin has a process of what you're asking, Councilor Brooks, but if the Chief or Chairman would like to respond. What we attend, it's a little bit different than what you're asking. I think that's what's happening here. I have no answer.

Well, mean, I saw about the same program for individuals to report. But my thing was the only thing that I would have to report, police department has better information than I do. So is there a way that we're collaborating with attorney general to help make the incidences measurable for the the work at the level of the state? That's my question. And I think it might be something worth considering if anyone has any responses.

Yeah, I hadn't had a chance to check-in with the chief about your question as of yet.

That's right.

No official meeting, but thank you, counselor, for going and attending that meeting. Typically, what we talk about, we have presentations from like, the state, the federal, what's happening, what they're doing. So I was glad to hear that. Last time we had someone, talking about, resources that we can, provide to people that are in a situation like this. And then we had a speaker that was from, the state.

I think she was from the refugee I can't remember the name of her agency, but that's that's what we had. Then we had we go back and forth in asking questions and clarifications. Then we get an update from either councilor I'm sorry, not councilor, congresswoman, Selena's or Bynum, or any any of our federal representations. We sort of get an update what's going on. So this time, I guess, it was the DA speaking.

That was really good to hear. Sometimes he'll send someone to every attorney general. Sorry. He'll send someone to, you know, just a representation. We typically have a lot of people there from different, just different elected officials representing, including ourselves. That's that's basically what happens in these meetings. But, yeah, thank you for for representing. I have no official meetings to report. Thank you.

Mister president Pratt.

I'll start the yeah. The chamber words banquet, the mayor, councilor Brooks, and Councilor Gonzales were there. And then the mayor and I were attending a special meeting for our one act and it was to the different jurisdictions. The ODOT is going through a process of changing to a capital improvement projects list of ten years now. And so we had picked our top five projects and then we were tasked with picking up to 10 more.

And so all the jurisdictions were able to submit more, and so we heard their presentations. Then on the fourth, the downtown revitalization community advisory committee, and we reviewed the rest of the civilis recommendations based on our five criteria and then from the U of O Consulting Group theirs. And I have to say the last two meetings, the conversations have been so great. People have been bringing up just amazing points in a wide swath of the group. I think it's really great, the conversations that are going on there.

On the fifth, we had Kakumas County Coordinating Committee meeting at the Moala Police Station, which is quite a drive, especially home in the dark. But it was really cool. They took an they had a 2,000 square foot police station, and they replaced it with this giant structure, like this building kind of, but two stories. And it had been a bowling alley. So they took the pieces of the carpeting and made a big carpet, and then they took some of the wood from the lanes and put it along the wall with their signs.

It was really kind of fun to see that. But we got an update on the capital improvement projects through ODOT. And then the discussion that got kind of interesting was and I don't know that it was planned, but it was just that we have all our issues with urban growth boundary and dealing with metro and everything to expand housing. But out there, they have a whole different set of issues, entities they deal with, and they get limited by DLCD and other groups. So it was just kind of interesting because they want to build out on one-sided tenant.

They're getting pushed back from these overriding entities telling them to build elsewhere. So it's just amazing and kind of frustrating that it's so difficult to provide the housing we need in our state. And the last thing I wanted to mention was that I'm not able to go to the Clackamas County Coordinating Committee retreat. It's up at Mt. Hood Resort on Friday, June 5 and Saturday, June 6. Everybody from the council is welcome to attend, but I'd really love if one or two or three or four of you could go because it's a really good day or so of really focusing in on the issues and helping set the agenda for the next year.

Done. Okay.

Well, mine were already covered. On February 26, the MMC met. No surprise at all. An update on what was going on at the legislature at that point and getting our last minute plugs in for what we liked and didn't like in terms of bills. And legislature called it a day for the short session.

Just want to compliment the Twelfth and Chamber on the business banquet. It was very well run. They had about 150 people there, Very enjoyable and congratulations to all the winners in the different categories. Washington County Chairs Mayor's meeting was on the second. Chair Harrington discussed the resolution that I don't if it's passed yet or not, but they what they're calling the rule of law resolution for Washington County in terms of immigration.

She discussed that the sheriff is evaluating. They do have one flock camera and what the flock camera is used for is for license plate recording and they're mounted to trailers and it's when they do their shoplifting enforcement. That's the only time they use them, so they're evaluating that right now. Cool thing they were given a grant, a pilot program to be able to use drones as first responders so the drone would go out before the sheriff got there because it could take a Washington County Sheriff thirty minutes to get somewhere, but the drone could be there in five or ten so that deputy knows what's going on ahead of time and can report. So they're going to try that out for a little bit.

She mentioned the library IGA, about the five year IGA. It's due by July 1. On fourfourteen, the commissioners to see a draft of the IGA. They plan to have that IGA out to the cities in May for a review. All the cities have to approve the IGA in order for it to take effect.

So they have to have it all done by June in terms of cities. The R1 Act I attended along with Council President Pratt, attended the core meeting with Council President Pratt, and finally had a meeting with Commissioner Snyder to discuss the county's proposal to increase the vehicle registration fee. And the reasons for that are mainly to fund transportation in Washington County. It's getting tighter and tighter in terms of being able to fund misstep and other transportation items. So by doubling the vehicle registration fee every two years, we would give them a source of revenue so that misstep wouldn't be as touched if you will every time and so the funding and the projects could go through.

And finally, if you haven't registered yet, I don't know if it's too late or you could just show up at the door tomorrow morning. Senator Wagner will be at the Country Club for the 12th and Chambers debrief from Senator Wagner on how he thought the short session went. I don't envy him because I have a feeling he's going have some tough questions. But kudos to him for being able to he'll stand up and take questions and do his presentation tomorrow morning. So if you didn't get a chance for us or you're interested, go to the chamber's website and I believe it starts at seven or 07:30 to about nine ish. And that's it for me. Do I have a motion to?

Move to adjourn. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Good evening. Have a terrific evening.